Chapter 104 - The Oldest Dragon

Death. Destruction. Domination.

Those were all terms I was deeply familiar with.

I put my head down, eyes closed for a while, before opening them. Then I laughed softly as I reached deep inside me. Almost instantly, I felt the turbulent forces of my power, a deep, dark raging pool of magic located inside the abyss that was part of my soul.

My head raised, my whole body held aloft in the air with the force of my magic-reinforced wings of black feathers, I watched my army of undead march through the town, slaughtering every human. Man and woman, child and adult. None of them were spared.

Blood dyed the stone-cobbled streets red, at the same time, also seeping into them. I eyed a family of humans trying to run away from the tide of liches, undead warriors, dread knights, death knights, misshapen undead beasts, and various other creatures.

The family did not escape.

A fireball had rained down upon the family of four, and I could see their opened mouths screaming in agony as the all-consuming fire burned them, branding and searing their very hearts. They fell, lying still on the ground as the fire still blazed on, as if dancing and laughing atop their unmoving corpses.

A winged creature, its upper body of a rotting male, human corpse and it lower body two stumps where the furry legs should have been, approached me.

“Great Lord,” it said in a croaking voice, a voice which was somewhat restricted by its rotting state. It was only natural, for the winged creature was just one of my weaker creations, a mere lower minion only suitable for scouting. “We have succeeded in destroying over half of Balik Kingdom. The few people who escaped have retreated behind the humans' defensive line, holing up in their forts.”

The humans were not too shabby. I had been expecting them to have fully reacted only after I had taken over more than three-fourths of their kingdom.

“Return back to your division,” I ordered.

“By your will, Great Lord.”

I did not even bother to watch the winged creature leave before turning around, my back faced toward the retreating minion. Lined up before me were all thirteen commanders of my army, seven of them females and the other six males. Most of them were Revenants while a few of them were liches. I had chosen only those who were competent enough to be a commander. And out of these thirteen commanders, only one of them was a dread knight, a winged female wearing a skull-emblazoned armor, and a horned helmet.

Dressed entirely in her usual black armor, the dread knight was known as Levia. In the line of commanders before me, she stood hovering in the central position. Levia was the only one out of the thirteen commanders who could not use magic. But even handicapped with such a disadvantage, she was the strongest out of the thirteen, only directly below me.

I watched with impassive, indifferent eyes, measuring their faces, their expressions, their subtle nuances.

“Great Lord Codrixas, let me handle the human king and queen who have holed up inside their castle,” Dread Knight Levia said with confidence, as if the conclusion was a sure-gone thing. An inevitability.

“What was that, you bitch! Don't you dare take all the glory. It is I who will win our Great Lord's affections and carry out his will,” the Revenant just to the immediate left of Levia shouted with a competitive edge in her voice. Dressed in a black spiderweb dress, she was a purple-haired Revenant with two small black , rounded horns that could just barely be seen protruding from the top of her head.

“Back at you, useless living maggot,” Levia retorted, quickly turning her head around to look toward Revenant.

“Who are you calling maggot! I will kill you and use your skull as a piss-stained chamber pot for humans!” the purple-haired Revenant replied. Known as Elphina, she was the second strongest commander.

“Enough,” I said, neither anger, nor any other inflection in my voice.

I was always in control. It had been ages, centuries, since I had lost control of my emotions. Even when I had been warring with my enemies, I had never once lost control over myself. Only as a child, weak and vulnerable still, had I lost control.

And in this continent at the southern edges of the world?

Impossible.

With just hearing one word, Elphina and Levia returned into their original positions, a look of discipline instantly replacing their previous expressions. They looked straight ahead at me, waiting for my order.

“Elphina, you can go handle this.”

A small smirk came over her face, and her whisper toward Levia almost went past my ears. “Hah, my win!”

A twitch of her eyebrows was all the reaction Levia showed at her whisper. Most likely, she was fuming at Elphina inside her mind.

I didn't mind their rivalry with each other, since their rivalry increased their competitiveness and their determination. There were no negative effects to speak of other than some time lost as the two rivals fought and argued with each other. But had their rivalry truly negatively affected me, I would have killed the both of them without even a second of hesitation.

“As for the rest of you, I want four evenly split groups to attack from all four directions while Elphina attacks their main stronghold.”

“By your will, Great Lord,” the call resounded among the thirteen commanders.

I stayed silent, still hovering in midair, watching the thirteen commanders leave for their assigned tasks.

Death. Destruction. Domination.

Those words were all that I know of.

And vengeance.

I live solely for the sake of this one goal, nursing the centuries old wounds that still fester inside me, like rotten maggots, like a dark bile, eating away at me.

I would kill Fenrir, the Great Wolf, the one who had murdered my love and many of my demonic brethren out of nowhere, the one who had left this gaping hole inside my heart.

For that, I would sacrifice everything and everyone to obtain enough power. Even if it took thousands of human souls.

It was for this purpose that I had left the Demon Continent centuries ago, traveling to the southern edges of the world, where the reputed Fenrir habituated, slowly biding my time and increasing my power.

And if need be, I would kill every being of this world...until all that is left are indifference and death.

Years passed by as I conquered the four human kingdoms in this southern continent, waiting for Fenrir to show up. My army had grown stronger from all the human sacrifices, and I had also grown stronger from absorbing the magic capacities of human mages.

Magic from different souls, however, were just not meant to be mixed. My lifespan grew shorter and shorter, yet at the same time, my magic grew stronger. It was a strange relationship, the opposite of what was natural—magic usually increased your lifespan.

When the Great Wolf finally did show up, I battled for two whole days with the monstrous beast, thousands upon thousands of my undead army dying. All of my thirteen commanders died facing it.

Finally, only the Great Wolf and I were left upon a field of destruction, corpses all around us. .

“Foolish demon, know your place. You should never have challenged me. I applaud your perseverance, however. You can die well knowing that you at least accomplished in giving me a light wound. ”

Pain wracked my whole body as I spurted out blood. My chest was hammered, and a lung had caved in. My organs were a mess, my wings of black feathers severed ruthlessly, and my legs were bleeding stumps.

I coughed out some more blood, too weak to reply to the Great Wolf, who stood more than a hundred meters tall.

I watched as the Great Wolf slowly lifted an enormous paw, the four claws sharpened into fine points, fine points which would soon end my life.

Then I stared at the descent of the death-dealing paw, feeling the rush of wind caused by the paw.

I closed my eyes. There was nothing I could do. I could only die knowing that I had not achieved my vengeance.

A few seconds passed by, but death had still not embraced me.

Curious, I opened my eyes and saw the Great Wolf bleeding even more heavily from its light wound, which had turned into a serious wound. It was the wound my thirteen commanders and I had dealt on its right hind-leg. There was a smell of burnt fur and flesh.

“Who dares!” The Great Wolf, Fenrir, turned his head toward the sky.

I followed his gaze, and saw a white-haired human with an amused smile on his face.

“A human? A mere human injured me? IMPOSSIBLE!” Fenrir howled into the skies.